MiniEnv
Share env vars
without handing them over.
Your .env values are encrypted on your Mac, to your teammates' public
keys, before they go anywhere. The server stores ciphertext it has no way to read.
Opening it the first time
MiniEnv is not notarised by Apple, so macOS will refuse it once. This is expected.
- Open it and let it fail
macOS says it "cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified". Click Done.
- System Settings → Privacy & Security
Scroll to the bottom. There is a line about MiniEnv being blocked, with an Open Anyway button.
- Open Anyway, then confirm
You only do this once. Updates from inside the app never ask again.
Why the warning? Apple charges $99/year for the certificate that removes it.
MiniEnv skips that for now, so you get the warning once. Updates are still signed —
the app refuses any release that is not signed with our key — that signature just
isn't Apple's.
How it works
- Create a key
Generated on your Mac and stored in the macOS Keychain. It is never written to a file and never sent anywhere.
- Push your .env
Each value is encrypted to every member of the project before it is uploaded, using age.
- Add a teammate
Your Mac re-encrypts every value to include them. Remove someone and it re-encrypts to exclude them, before the change is accepted.
What the server can see
If it were breached tomorrow, this is the whole of it.
Variable names, e.g. STRIPE_SECRET_KEY | Visible |
|---|
| Emails, project and team names, who is in what | Visible |
|---|
| Every variable's value | Encrypted — unreadable |
|---|
| Your private key | Never leaves your Keychain |
|---|
Names being visible is a real trade-off, not an oversight: the app has to show you a
list of your variables without decrypting them. Values never appear in a log, an
error, or an analytics event, at any level.
Honest limits
- Apple Silicon Macs only. The key lives in the macOS Keychain, so there is no Windows or Linux build.
- Removing someone is not retroactive. Future values are re-encrypted without them; a
.env they already downloaded stays on their machine and keeps working. Nothing can undo that — rotate those secrets at the source.
- Lose your key and the data is gone. There is no recovery, no escrow, no admin override — a support-friendly recovery mechanism is a decryption mechanism. A teammate re-encrypts for your new key instead.